Budget lessons from Bell Labs
Seema Singh -
Thursday, August 21, 2008 3:39 PM
What was once iconic of fundamental research and served as a well-spring of innovation for the telecommunications industry at large is now on the brink. Bell Labs, reports Nature in today's issue, has "bottomed out".
Bell says the report of "its death" is exaggerated.
Could be, but only to some extent as experts had expressed this concern way back in 1983 when its then parent company AT&T was restructured. Its present parent company Alcatel-Lucent first struggled and then gave up reviving the spirit of the lab.
People who've worked there say being part of a competitive company did it in.
The downward spiral (in more than one sense - one its top researchers got embroiled in data falsification) is also linked to a generic fact that if basic research is guided by short-term, designated, or even populist, outcomes it can't go too far.
This also applies to bureaucrats in the corridors of Indian funding agencies, who often grudge supporting basic science on the plea that India cannot afford to spend money on basic research; applied research is what we need.
The view hasn't changed much in recent years even as the budget for science has gone up significantly. Though it's another story that doing basic science requires, more than money, different thinking, a problem solving approach.
Perhaps, the lesson to learn from Bell Labs is that basic research is not a luxury - neither for corporates, nor for countries; it is a necessity if one wants to own technology and prosper.
Of course, how one balances short- and long-term goals, is another issue altogether.